The Architect of Olaplex’s Turnaround

Ever since the moment she was appointed chief executive of Olaplex at the end of 2023, Amanda Baldwin has been all about bonding.

It’s a metaphor, and also not. Olaplex came to market in 2014 with a key ingredient, bis-aminopropyl diglycol dimaleate, that kicked off an arms race for products that protected and restored the bonds in hair broken by heat damage or the colouring process. After it was acquired in 2020 by private equity firm Advent International, the company ballooned to an eye-watering IPO, thanks to shoppers’ obsession with at-home hair care during the height of Covid-19. Net sales were expected to hit $580 million in 2021, according to the company’s first post-IPO earnings report, before rocketing up to $800 million in 2022.

That year, Olaplex’s fate changed. The company lowered its sales guidance to just over $700 million, sending its stock plummeting. Months later, a group of customers in California sued the haircare company, alleging hair loss and fraudulent claims. Sales slumped to $422.7 million by 2024. The suit fizzled out, but the episode prompted some in the beauty community to wonder if the company had allowed its most important bond to fray — the one it built with its customer base.

Restoring it won’t be easy, but Baldwin, a career marketer whose recent feats include making sunscreen a covetable beauty product for Supergoop, is up to the trial.

Since she joined the company in December 2023, Baldwin has been hard at work on a refresh of significant proportions, remaking Olaplex to look less like science-backed haircare and more like a lifestyle brand. Its logo has been recast in boldfaced letters, and its black-and-white palette has been struck with accents of crimson — a nod to Olaplex’s red carpet roots intended to evoke “the passion of the stylist,” she said.

But the brand’s most significant changes are less immediately visible. Baldwin has brought in new leadership figures, including CMO Katie Gohman (who joined from Marc Jacobs and Ralph Lauren) and Joel Maza, who was elevated to the new position of chief product and innovation officer. Recent launches like its curl gel and scalp serum in growing segments of hair care, and pro-forward marketing are other key elements of Olaplex’s revival in progress. In early March, the company published its fourth quarter 2024 earnings, alongside a projection to hit as much as $431 million in revenue this year — a 2 percent increase that would symbolise a reversal of the brand’s misfortunes.

Will its rebrand be enough? To reclaim its erstwhile position as a leader in the global haircare category, the company also has to repair its bonds with stylists and consumers who have moved on. On the February earnings call, Baldwin noted that the company’s marketing investment has taken longer than expected to improve demand across products.

Splitting Hairs

Baldwin builds brands for a living. Prior to joining Olaplex, she was the chief executive of Supergoop, the US-based suncare label that under her tenure saw a wide international expansion and the brand’s acquisition by Blackstone Growth. Her appointment at Olaplex would evoke her “strengths across marketing, product development and execution,” said Olaplex executive chairman JP Bilbrey, who was appointed in July 2023 as part of the greater turnaround.

If Bilbrey, who joined from the Hershey Company, has his eyes on topline revenue, Baldwin’s goal to get there is to reposition the brand as covetable once again.

“I’m at my best when the stakes are high and change is in the air, and everything is sort of possible,” Baldwin said.

She touts recent launches, like the brand’s scalp treatment and a three-step curl regimen, as evidence of the brand’s new direction. Each capitalises on customer needs in a way previously untouched by the brand, and accompany in-salon treatments — affirming their commitment to the professional channel.

Olaplex’s original products were sold through salons only; it widened distribution in 2018 to include an e-commerce channel and specialty retail (including Sephora and Ulta Beauty, which can only carry the brand’s non-professional products). In 2024, Olaplex was sold at 105 partner salons and through 55 retailers, a slight dip from 115 salons and 60 retail doors the year before, according to the company’s earnings filings. Its specialty business saw a lift of 5.7 percent 2024, boosted by a launch on Amazon in September of that year; meanwhile, its professional channel shrunk by over 27 percent.

While the brand once owned the promise of “bond repair,” other labels — notably K18, founded in 2020 — have encroached on not only its technology but its professional partners. Baldwin said engaging the pro is essential to the success of the business, noting that stylists appear front and centre in the brand’s glossy new imagery.

“It’s more than a revenue channel — this is our purpose,” Baldwin said.

This is classic Baldwin, who sees capital-B Brand as the beating heart of a beauty business. She does not believe that purpose is more important than revenue, but that the former is the key to the latter. Reinvigorating Olaplex’s professional channel is as much a marketing exercise as it is a strategic initiative.

The company has formed a “collective of stylists,” said Baldwin. Tracey Cunningham, a longtime Olaplex spokesperson, is one of them. She recently flew to and from Thailand on Olaplex’s dime during filming of Max’s “The White Lotus,” so she could tend to the blondes Michelle Monaghan, Leslie Bibb and Carrie Coon.

While reinvigorating its international business is a distant priority, Baldwin said the brand’s current focus is in North America, where it is currently on tour showing off its new look; Olaplex’s salon pop-ups, or “Bond Houses,” will unfold across the country with a campaign that features stars like “Bridgerton’s” Nicola Coughlin or “The Real Housewives’” Jenna Lyons, alongside Olaplex stylists like Halley Brisker or colourists like Jenna Perry.

During Olaplex’s growth spurt, the company announced its intention to launch into other categories like skincare, for which its bond technology also applies. (Fellow science-backed brands like Augustinus Bader have tried to tread the line between skin and hair products with mixed results.) But Baldwin said the brand’s focus will remain on hair for now.

Business Critical

Olaplex was a generation-defining brand. But its immediate success undermined its long-term growth.

The company was reportedly worth $13.1 billion at its early pandemic height. When its hero product, the No. 3 Hair Perfector, suffused social media feeds, many customers who saw the ads (or heard recommendations from people like Kim Kardashian) didn’t realise that it wasn’t a universal conditioner or a hair mask, but a treatment for specifically damaged hair, meant to be applied by a stylist. A 2022 lawsuit filed in California alleging hair loss caused by Olaplex products swelled to 100 plaintiffs, but a year later a judge denied a class action lawsuit, citing too much variability in the types of injury; the original plaintiff voluntarily dismissed their case a few weeks later.

Misuse of its products and corresponding misinformation have been two of the biggest risks to Olaplex’s longevity. The company has addressed these issues in part by introducing easier-to-use formulas like its No 5 Leave-In Conditioner fortified with its proprietary bond technology — the product launched exclusively at Sephora, and sits alongside Ouai and K18 in the category’s best-sellers. But its key to getting back on track lies with hairstylists, and whether their relationship with the brand can be repaired.

“This is a work in progress, and I don’t love the word ‘turnaround,’ because that suggests going back to where you came from,” said Baldwin. “I like ‘transformation,’ because it’s about who you become in the future.”

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